Page 25 of A Perfect Engagement
“I am as well.” Daniel smiled and came to sit down on the settee next to her. “My mother used to say I would ruin my eyes staying up to read by candlelight. Of course, she was right. That’s why I need my spectacles these days to read.” He crossed one ankle over his knee and stretched an arm across the back of the sofa.
A small laugh slipped out before Charlotte could cover her mouth. Daniel’s eyebrows shot up. She couldn’t imagine this big, brawny man peering through a pair of spectacles. She leaned forward, “Do you have them? Can I see them on?”
Daniel reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a slim pair of silver-rimmed spectacles. He placed them on his face and held his arms out wide. “So, what do you think?”
Her breath caught. The glasses’s small round frames did look a bit out of place on his broad face. But far from being unattractive, they added an extra dimension to his already handsome features. He looked as though he might wax poetic at any moment.What a ridiculous thought, she grinned. “They look quite nice. I’m sorry I laughed.” The glasses magnified the good humor in Daniel’s eyes, eyes the color of a strong cup of Earl Grey tea. She could sit here and stare into those eyes all night.
“Don’t worry, no offense taken. I hardly wear them, just when reading. Otherwise the words are a little squidgy.” He pulled them off and lay them down on one of his muscular thighs. Thighs like carved marble that were barely contained by the gray trousers he wore. “What are you reading there?”
Charlotte blinked. What did he say? She tore her gaze from his leg and looked down at her lap. The letters lay across her lap. “Oh, these are letters we, my friends and I, found tucked into two books we bought at the shop in town.” Would he laugh if she told him they were love letters?
“Hidden letters? Sounds like the beginning to a good mystery.” He reached out to snatch one from her lap. “May I?”
“Wait…the thing is, I must warn you they are of a personal nature…they are love letters.” A warm blush crept up her cheeks. It was one thing to read them silently to herself but quite another to share them with Daniel, who surely would just make fun of the words on the page.
Daniel quirked an eyebrow. “A love letter, hmmm.” He scanned the page, and then he began to read out loud, his low voice soft and intimate.
“My love,
My heart is filled with a dichotomy of joy and sorrow. Joy that I am in London and able to see you again. Sorrow that we must still be careful not to display our love. Lady T is my benefactor, and until I publish my book, I must cater to her wishes. But I have a plan brewing in my mind and heart how I might make a more substantial living. Then I might claim you as my bride. Be patient, and please believe in me. In the meantime, I turn my thoughts to the moments we have stolen.”
Charlotte’s heart melted at the plight of the star-crossed lovers. Who was his love? A gentlewoman no doubt, someone above his station perhaps. Daniel had perched the glasses on his nose to read, and his hair fell over his forehead, making her itch to brush it back into place. His voice intoxicated her senses. The next part of the letter was quite saucy. She braced herself as he continued.
“Although I should be satiated by the night we spent together, I find instead I still long for your touch. My hunger for you is only intensified with each moment we share. I yearn for the graze of your fingertips across my chest, the caress of your rose-colored lips, the heat of your body stretched out along mine.
Each stolen kiss leads me to want more, more moments, more laughter, more of you.
Always, J”
Charlotte swallowed hard. Heat spread through her and pooled in her gut as he read. It wasn’t embarrassment, but instead an awareness of how close Daniel sat, how good he smelled, how much she wished she could experience the words on the page, just once. Daniel set the letter down. Was it a trick of the candlelight, or did she see the same heat reflected in his eyes?
He broke the connection by swiping his glasses off. “This is one hell of a love letter.” He grinned ruefully. “Pardon my language.”
She grinned back at him. “No, you’re right. He certainly is effusive. There were two letters tucked into a copy of Mary DavysThe Reformed Coquetand another in a copy ofEvelinaby Frances Burney. We think perhaps there may be more in the other books which came from the same crate.”
“Can I read the other two?”
Charlotte glanced up at him with suspicion. But his expression was one of curiosity, not mocking, so she handed them over. She leaned back into the corner against the large brocade pillow. Listening to him read the letters, she could easily imagine he was the writer and she the recipient. She closed her eyes and let the lovely words roll over her.
“Perhaps she is married. That’s why they must hide their feelings,” Daniel said.
Her eyes popped open at his statement. “Nonsense. He wrote he had a plan to make her his bride.”
Daniel shrugged his shoulders. “True, but he would say anything to gain her favor it seems. He appears fairly obsessed.”
She straightened, and her hand gripped the back of the settee. “That’s what makes it so romantic. Doesn’t it make you wonder how it will all end? The letters are like pages torn from a good book.”
His long fingers brushed lightly across her hand. “Are all women so enthralled by pretty words?” he teased.
She should be insulted, but as his fingers trailed a warm path across her skin, her thoughts scattered. Her gaze flitted from their hands to his face. He watched her with an intensity that made her feel exposed. A curl of desire unfurled in her stomach as his thumb grazed the inside of her wrist.
Daniel leaned closer, and as though pulled by the same invisible thread, she leaned in as well, his mouth so close it would be a matter of inches for him to capture hers. No doubt his lips would be warm and skillful, but what would they taste like? She swallowed hard.
“The right words have the power to enthrall, no matter who you are,” she whispered.
A crash of glass shattering rang out from the corridor. Charlotte startled. A loud thud banged against the wooden door as though somebody had stumbled against it. Daniel jumped to his feet. “What was that?”
Shouting began in earnest. “Cheat! There is no way you could have had an ace!”
